Commission Co-Chairs:

Commission Liaison:

Mission:

To inform membership regarding trends and issues in the design of English methods courses and their effect on teacher learning.

Current Projects:

The issue of writing a follow-up to Peter Smagorinsky’s book How English Teachers Get Taught (1995) was brought up again. For the follow-up book, we want to do a survey asking a series of questions about methods and teacher preparation in English Language Arts. We want to consider the following four main research questions: a. What are methods courses? (What do they include?) At what point in their educations are methods courses taken by students?b. What assignments are we giving in methods courses? How are those assignments assessed? c. What books are we using in methods courses?d. What types of field experiences are students doing in conjunction with methods courses?

We would also like to develop a database (web site?) which contains types of field experiences that English Ed students are doing for methods, what types of assignments are connected with those experiences, and whether those are for English or Education courses. List of field experiences (observations, teaching demonstrations, small group work, tutoring, student teaching, etc.).

Continued interest in what texts are being used in Methods. Follow-up on Alyson Whyte’s brochure.